


Open Water

by SkyHighDisco



Category: The Grand Tour (TV) RPF, Top Gear (UK) RPF
Genre: Family, Family Feels, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Richard is an A dad, Scary Movies, Willow is an A+ daughter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:34:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25638844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkyHighDisco/pseuds/SkyHighDisco
Summary: Willow watched an unsettling movie and now she can’t sleep. Luckily, her father is here to help.
Relationships: Richard Hammond & Willow Hammond
Kudos: 6





	Open Water

It is storming hard the night Willow Hammond shuffles down the hallway looking quite troubled. The rain is viciously assaulting the huge residence and the night sky is blinking every few seconds, preceding waves of stampedic rumble. Rhythm of water against the windows is swaying in dynamic, persistent, but raising its voice every once in a while, underlining its bit of the argument in which the residents of Herefordshire had no word in.

But the girl’s facial expression isn’t related to Mother Nature getting mad for just another reason in the row. Her unease has nothing to do with suspicious shadows in the corners or minacious way the sky seemed to open up on Earth to create atmospheric patterns ideal for the exploiting of a horror movie.

Willow pitter-patters down the parquetted hall despite there being no need for it, and for all she feels, she is reduced back to a child where she faced a real risk of scolding by sneaking out at night. Thirst isn’t involved this time.

She automatically reaches the cased opening to the living room and peeks in.

Her father is sitting on the couch. A bolt of lightning emphasizes his aging face. Grey hair is battling its way from out of his temples and dusting his goatee. No amount of persuasion is going to convince him he looks better and more natural with it. Not even her mother is powerful enough. Jeremy Clarkson’s twitter post from March had to have been addressed subtly for Richard.

A laptop on a coffee table, light reflects on his spectacles. Richard is not concerned, but his expression tells Willow he’d rather be in bed with his wife.

He doesn’t appear to hear her yet, against the calculated odds, so deeply plunged into work, and Willow wonders if she should announce her presence. She is old enough to not be scolded being out of bed this late, and even then, her father never used a big stick about those things, despite her and Izzy were rarely problematic when it came to bedtime, not seldom a bit playful.

Before she can consider further, her mouth mutter sheepishly on its own. “Daddy?”

Her father’s head shoots up to look in her direction; his hair is tousled and he looks like he hasn’t slept in days. Her parents weren’t telling her anything, but Willow isn’t stupid; she knows this blasted virus has stepped on all their plans for which backup they were completely unprepared for.

Nevertheless, Richard would never tell her about his problems as to not burden her and she wishes there is some kind of apocalyptically ranged way she could show how much it meant to her and her sister and how much he doesn’t need to do it and how much they were all in everything together.

Richard’s borderline-troubled gaze immediately melts. “Oh. Hey, darling. What are you doing up?”

Even as she is seventeen, he has reason to ask so, since it is almost half past two in the morning. Even Izzy is fast asleep, phone recently scrolled through left charging on the nightstand.

Willow instantly feels like a little child again, ashamed even, and wraps her arms around her, looking almost apologetic.

Her father sees it and softens up completely.

“I don’t like that face, young lady. I think we need to do something about it. Come here.”

He extends his arm and his youngest daughter is quick to join him on the couch. Richard rubs her pyjama-clad shoulder and lets her lay her head on his shoulder. He knows how children can drastically change when they reach teenage years, some even beginning to reject their parents, and Richard is immensely glad that, while his girls have become mature, the only thing that’s really changed about them is their size.

“What are you doing?” she asks him, eyeing the laptop. A blinking writing line waiting for the continuation of the sentence in a formal e-mail the only indicator of cyber life on the screen. 

“Office business”, he says, waving an unspecified hand at the work. “Just rearranging of schedules and there’s some plans to move some stuff out, but it’s probably never going to happen because we’ve been planning that for months.”

He speaks in a low voice she is very fond of and it used to put her to sleep. When he wanted, James May could achieve the same affectionate husky colour, and Willow would beam every time she realized he only used it with her when he would tell her stories.

“Sounds tragically mind-numbing”, she admits, trying to take her mind off her concerning streaming conscience.

“Well, it is, sort of. Until those things actually get done. That’s the fun part.”

She is sorry she only half-listens, but she just can’t stop thinking about what she saw. And again, her father knows her too well.

“And what’s the matter with you?” Richard uses a thumb of his free hand to remove a stray bit of hair off her face. “I know we named you Willow, but I hope it’s not why you’re sad for. If it’s any consolation, you’re turning eighteen in a year so you can go to the registrar’s office and change it.”

“What’s the scariest movie you’ve ever watched?” she blurts out. 

Richard blows air and it stirs up his hair and runs a hand through it for a good measure. “There is one. I can’t remember the name, I was a bit older than your sister when I first saw it. I remember the movie was utterly boring and the only reason why I haven’t left is because I’d had to have wriggled past about twenty people to get out of the theatre. But then there was this one scene that I can exactly picture so vividly, like I watched it today. This main character walks into a hospital and it’s seemingly empty. And all the while there is not a single noise in the film. The theatre is dead quiet. He is checking the rooms, looking for something and decides to check what is behind the curtain of one medical bed. And it is a guy sewn alive into a cow with only his head sticking out of its decaying body.”

Willow leans away like her father is the one that has been the victim in the scene and hasn’t bothered to take a shower afterwards. “That is the grossest and most disturbing thing I have ever heard.”

Richard makes a vigorous sound with wide-eyes that is meant to be his kind of confirmation. “Precisely. The thing is that I was so hit by the sight that I completely disregarded what was happening further on and all the way to the end of the movie. Haven’t slept for a week. I never want to see that movie again.”

His big eyes turn into arrowy slits as he leans an elbow against the headrest and supports his temple with two fingers. “I sense that this question wasn’t for the small talk.”

Willow Hammond fights back a huge shudder. She doesn’t think she’ll ever come near the sea or ocean wherever on holiday they might next go. A rumble of thunder produces a small earthquake, making the windows rattle. Somewhere in the house, a dog whines. Willow briefly wonders how the horses are.

She looks around the room. “I really love this house.”

“Scallywag…”

That’s a familiar pattern. Her father used this affectionate term whenever it involved a game of chase with his two girls and a vicious tickle attack that followed once he’d catch them. It’s been so long since he used it that it serves as a fine tool to break her dam. 

“We watched one, we did”, she admits quickly, racing to spill it as quick as possible. “I didn’t mean to. Izzy started it first, then I joined. Then when she realized where it was going, she left. She told me I should go, too, because it was going to be horrible, and it was, and I didn’t mean to but you know when you really have to know what’s going to happen and you do it anyway, out of morbid curiosity?”

“When did you watch it?”

“This evening.” 

Richard’s squint pulsates once. “Which one?”

“ _Open Water._ ”

Richard silently scans his brain for information, but doesn’t have a specific eureka. “Is that the… one where a couple goes cruising with a guy who ends up slaughtering them both?”

“No”, Willow denies, and practically tells him an entire plot. How it was indeed a couple who went scuba diving on Bahamas in the middle of the ocean. How by an accident, while they were under, the man in charge of the boat miscounted the number of heads on deck and they left without them. How they were trapped there surrounded by sharks for nearly twenty four hours. How the man first consoled the woman, telling her everything is going to be alright, how, when they realized they were forgotten, they started to yell and blame each other, how the guy was bit by a shark on the leg, how he was screaming in despair and fear while he bled, how the woman was now the one who was consoling _him_ how she realized he was dead the next morning, how she uncuffed him from the equipment, sent him adrift, watched the sharks tear him apart and how she had a moment of resignation when more sharks got drawn by the blood and, poker-faced, drowned herself.

“It was horrible, daddy”, Willow’s voice was tangled with emotion. She doesn’t feel tears coming, but there is something in her chest that is crumbling her heart like old newspapers. “There is this one scene where no other sound is heard but like when the wind is howling though walls, and that sound is in a loop and it’s so horrible. And people are just carelessly partying on the coast at night and simultaneously the couple are trapped out there and they have no other light but lighting strikes and he is screaming and panicking all the while. And worst thing yet, it’s based on a true story. I swear, I googled it. It hit me really hard, daddy, I- I don’t think I want to go to sea on vacation again, I don’t want it to happen to mum and you. Can we maybe go to the mountains next year? Somewhere cold. Not too cold. Y’know, but – land.”

At this point, Richard’s heart is shattered into million pieces. He wants to find whoever directed the movie and punch him. He wants to know who the guy who makes TV schedules is so he can strangle him because they spooked his little baby and now she can’t sleep, and she shouldn’t be stressed about those kinds of things at this age or obliged to feel nervous whenever she sees a body of water when she wouldn’t even be either of those things if she just skipped watching the bloody movie.

But he’s looking at her gorgeous eyes and he sees nothing but a little five-year-old waking him up at a dead of night because _I had a nightmare, daddy._

“Come here”, Richard holds out his arm again and cradles her against his chest. He smells surprisingly fresh and it succeeds at calming Willow a little. 

Her father rests his chin on the top of her head and begins talking.

“Now hear me out. Let’s take the real-life story for a moment. It happened in 1998., right? Back then the GPS wasn’t really a thing and was more used in NASA, the navy, for navigating planes or big ships, but mostly for land stuff. Nowadays you carry it all around without knowing — in your phone. 

It’s perfectly normal and mandatory that, should you ever take a dive like that, you need to have a locator on you, and it’s going to be the part of equipment. The system of counting people isn’t as primitive as scribbling it on a piece of paper anymore, either. The person in charge of counting must have in mind a precise count that is usually digitally stored often with a swipe of ID. And then there’s name-calling, too. 

And whatever you do, wherever you go, mingle. Mingle with people because it gives them something to remember you by, so there is no hope you will slip off their mind.” He gives a solitary huff. “As if I’d let you go anywhere alone. Not on my watch.”

“I go shopping alone.”

“No, you go shopping with your mother, sister, friends or me”, Richard kisses her hair.

“Sweetheart, there is a million things that have gotten better and smarter since then, and chances for something like that to happen again to anyone are as unlikely as your mother ever approving me to sit in a dragster again.”

“But the real couple”, to her mortification, she almost whines. “I can’t imagine how they must’ve felt in those final moments. Completely scared and hopeless and feeling like the whole world forgot they existed.”

“Then don’t”, Richard murmurs into her hair. “Stop troubling your pretty little clever head with those things. They are in good hands now. They are somewhere dry and warm and nothing will ever happen to them again.”

And it is this click that has Willow realize that he is right. They did their bidding — an awful, unfair bidding and she hopes the man who counted wrong burned in hell (no, actually, that’s not nice to say to anyone. Served his judgement, at least) — and now they are better than they ever were. The movie is the movie, there is nothing to it, and if she does somehow end up being put into a similar situation (which she promises herself not to, ever) she will not be alone. She will never be alone.

Richard gently caresses her hair, like her thoughts resonated in his head. “The fact that you’re seventeen doesn’t mean you’re ready for R-rated movies.”

“I know, I know”, she says and makes herself comfortable in her father’s safe embrace, not quite ready to get up and shuffle her way back to her bed. It’s a too long way. Instead, she nuzzles his chest, feeling warm and safe and loved. “Thanks, daddy.”

Richard smiles. “No more R-rated movies until you are my age.”

She lightly pinches his arm and he chuckles warmly, cheek rested on top of her head.

When he realizes she has gone limp and her breathing is evened out a short while later, Richard gives her temple another loving, soft, lingering kiss and settles back into cushions himself. There is no way he’s going to wake his little princess up. She’s perfectly fine here in his arms. There is always time to take care of business in the morning. And besides, he _is_ feeling a little tired.

With a small smile on his face, Richard lets rain’s drumming steer him to some much needed shut-eye.


End file.
